Film director Winner dies

Flamboyant British film director Michael Winner, best known for the Death Wish series of the 1970s and 80s, died at his home in London yesterday. He was 77.

Winner, who reinvented himself in recent years as an outspoken restaurant critic in the Sunday Times, had been ill for some time, and revealed last summer that specialists had given him 18 months to live due to heart and liver problems.

Winner’s movie career spanned some 40 years and he worked with some of the biggest stars in Hollywood, including Marlon Brando, Robert Mitchum and Faye Dunaway.